Thursday, July 15, 2010

Princes of the Brotherhood of the Lion

The Brotherhood of the Lion is the formal name of the thieves guild of the City State of the Invincible Overlord. It originated among rebel Ghinorians after the Tharian Overlords took control of City State over a hundred years ago. Since then their ideals of liberation has turned to thoughts involving Mammon instead of Mitra.

In the mid 90s I ran a slew of what I call them campaigns. Basically everybody played a member of a group or organization in the Majestic Wilderlands. In this campaign everybody played a member of the Brotherhood of the Lion. Because Dwayne of Gamer's Closet insisted on playing a mage the idea of foggers was born which evolved into the Mountebanks of Supplement VI Majestic Wilderlands.

These campaign required details of the organization which fed as background into later campaigns. Because the campaign was effectively a playtest involving players the result was something better then if I created it as mere background for an adventure.

While cleaning up I found a notebook detailing the Princes of the Brotherhood. The ruler of Ghinorian Realms were known as Princes; the Brotherhood being what it is co-opted the title for their own use to designated the bosses of bosses.

Like most of the stuff I did with the Majestic Wilderlands I didn't throw away Mr. Bledsaw work and incorporated what he wrote about the thieves guild into my version.

Kaflatela "Hound of Death" Grand Prince

can be found at the Guildhouse in the Dagger's Noose (a tavern that acted as the front)

fighting style is like Slice. (Slice Handler was a fighter ran by Tim of Gothridge Manor who was noted for using daggers ... lots and lots of daggers.)

mysterious (yeah a bit terse but this was the one prince that the players never messed around with)

has a falcon named Banshee. Trained to attack

newest Prince, won the title by bloody battles with his predecessor.

can be found at the Dragon Head Inn (formally the Red Pearl Inn). (Shadowhawk was a minor part of a previous campaign involving Tim and Dwayne character's Draco-lindus and William Enderil. They may a tacit alliance with Shadowhawk and allowed him to use their tavern).

You can see a pdf of the original notes here. And read more of the Brotherhood here. And for those new to my blog I have a long standing website with a variety of Majestic Wilderlands information here.

Bat in the Attic Games

How to make a Sandbox

The Old School Renaissance

To me the Old School Renaissance is not about playing a particular set of rules in a particular way, the dungeon crawl. It is about going back to the roots of our hobby and seeing what we could do differently. What avenues were not explored because of the commercial and personal interests of the game designers of the time.

What are RPGs?

A game where the players play individual characters interacting with a setting with their actions adjudicated by a human referee.

Rules are an aide to help the referee adjudicate actions and to help the players interact with the setting.

Dice are used to inject uncertainty which make a tabletop RPG campaign more interesting than "Let's Pretend".

The only thing a player needs to do to roleplay a character is to act if he or she was really there in the setting in that situation.